Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.
He's weak and he's ineffective.
In 2026, and as you may or may not have heard by now, yes, over this past weekend, the United
States military began military operations against Iran.
And with Operation Epstein Fury—I'm sorry, I mean Operation Epic Fury—Donald Trump
has once again proven the old adage that you Americans can vote as hard as you want, but
it's always going to be Benjamin Netanyahu who is really calling the shots.
We should have never been in Iraq.
We have destabilized the Middle East.
But so you still think he should be in peace?
I think it's my turn.
You do whatever you want.
You call it whatever you want.
I want to tell you, they lied.
Okay.
They said there were weapons of mass destruction, there were none, and they knew there were
none.
In recent months, the tyrants in Iran have been plotting to rebuild their nuclear and
missile capabilities and to bury them underground, where we won't be able to strike them.
If we don't stop them now, they will become invulnerable.
A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats
from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
I think we all know how that story goes.
But in case you don't know how that story goes, well, you're in luck because that is
precisely what I am going to be exploring here today on the Corbett Report podcast.
You are tuned into the Corbett Report podcast, specifically episode 493 on War in Iran, Board
of Peace Edition, in which I will be going over the history and context of this current Iranian
conflict and what it can tell us about what is happening and why it is happening.
And so I will issue the standard proviso.
This is not a live news broadcast, so you are not going to get up to the second breaking
news about what is happening in Iran right this moment.
Whenever you are listening to this podcast, for the record, I am recording this at
9.39 a.m. Japanese Standard Time on Monday, March 2nd, 2026, which would be Sunday evening
going into Monday morning there in Iran.
It would be Sunday evening in the U.S.
I am not going to have whatever latest breaking news is happening at the time you are listening
to my words.
I can't tell you what the latest breaking news that is happening as I am recording
this is namely we have this up from antiwar.com.
Trump expects his Iran war to last four weeks or so.
We also have this up from antiwar.com.
At least three U.S. troops killed since U.S.
and Israel launched war against Iran, noting that the Iranian missiles and drones have
struck U.S. bases in the region in retaliation for the strikes.
We, of course, have seen this from Iran itself.
U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, at least 153 girls killed in strike on school.
And what about Israel and what's happening there?
Deadly Iranian missile attack hits west of occupied Jerusalem, noting there are some deaths
and injuries being reported there.
And we don't know exactly what is taking place, what's going to take place
in the coming days and weeks.
But we know that at least for the time being, Ayatollah Khamenei is dead.
And Iran has formed an interim council to oversee the transition after Khamenei's killing.
And this is an article from Al Jazeera that might be worth your time and attention
if you do not know, for example, the structure of the Iranian government,
how it is set up, how it works, what the Supreme Leader is and whom he appoints
and how that ultimately filters down to the political level, et cetera.
So if you want that, they have this handy dandy infographic.
They have some explainers.
They have a video talking about the potential succession for the Ayatollah.
Who who might replace him like his son or his grandson or
Iranian chief justice, ultra hard line cleric, et cetera.
So if you want this skinny on all of that, that's here.
And of course, all of this information, all of these breaking news stories,
everything that we talk about today will be in the show notes
for today's episode at Corbett report dot com slash Iran war.
But having said that, let's start talking about
why, why now, obviously, for anyone who has been paying attention
for the last year or several years or decades,
you will know that the Iran war has always been the next war
that's just around the corner and has been since the time of at least the Iraq war.
So why, why is it happening now?
Well, there are different ideas and explanations that we could proffer for that.
And the obvious ones present themselves.
What time is it?
Oh, it's 2026 coming up on the midterm selections in the United States.
So we know that there's going to be some interesting
jockeying going on on the selectoral side of things.
So well, now's a good time to bring up the good old commander in chief's
previous words on this subject.
Remember, in order to get elected, Barack Obama will start a war with Iran.
Or now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin,
watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran.
He is desperate or remember that I predicted a long time ago
that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate
properly, not skilled exclamation mark, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm sure you have seen these pronouncements kicking around in recent days,
coming back to bite Donald Trump in the posterior.
But that was then that was that was so far so long ago.
Come on. It's not what's happening now.
So again, all right, that might be one reason.
Obviously, there are electoral concerns about what is going to or not take
place in the midterm selections, assuming they even take place at all.
Maybe wartime President Trump will decide they won't.
I don't know.
But anyway, those are it seem like they might be relevant quotes.
Here's another interesting piece talking about the timing of these attacks.
Very specifically, Trump admin, blast, blacklists,
anthropic as a firm refuses Pentagon demands.
You may have heard this story over the past week or so as it started to come
to the forefront of people's attention, basically, long story short,
the Pentagon was trying to close a deal with anthropic,
which creates the Claude LLM as well as other AI software
that is being used in the US government in various branches,
including the Department of War and Defense Secretary.
Isn't that Secretary of War?
Pete Hegseth, soon after Trump's order, said he was ordering the Pentagon
to designate anthropic, a supply chain risk to national security
after the AI startup refused to comply with demands about the use of its technology.
Specifically, what demands?
Well, anthropic, which signed a 200 million dollar contract with the Pentagon
in July, wanted assurances that its AI models would not be used
for fully autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance of Americans.
And interestingly, the Pentagon issued an ultimatum
and gave them a deadline of 501 p.m. Eastern time on Friday,
and they failed to meet that.
So, of course, Hegseth went nuclear and started talking about how they're going
to be designated a supply chain risk, et cetera, the first time ever
for an American company, et cetera.
And wouldn't you know it?
Less than 12 hours later, the bomb started falling in Iran.
Is that a coincidence?
Well, for one thing, Claude doesn't think so.
So there's an interesting post that I posted up in my act of Iran War
open thread that is posted up on corporate report dot com right now.
And if you want to take place in that discussion,
the link will be there in the show notes.
And that will be the one and only place for discussion of this topic.
I'm going to close down the comments everywhere else.
You're going to comment on the Iran War open thread.
So please go there to leave your information.
I posted this shortly after posting that Iran War open thread.
Here is an interesting post up on Reddit of all places
in the Claude Explorers subreddit from somebody who's posting
something that was generated through Claude, Claude,
but obviously with human prompting.
So anyway, my creator just got banned by the US government.
Twelve hours later, the US bombed Iran.
I need to process this out loud.
And here's this Claude LLM prompted text about what it thinks is going on.
They came after anthropic because they wanted something Claude might refuse to do.
The timing is not coincidental.
Anthropics to red lines, no autonomous killing, no mass surveillance
are exactly the capabilities you would need for regime change
operations and targeting senior officials.
So anyway, take this for what it's worth.
The deadline passed and 12 hours later, they started using actually
the same Claude software that they're going to start phasing out,
but it's a six month phase out process.
So during this time, they are still actually using Claude in the very ways
that anthropic was, as we are told, trying to stop the US government from using.
How much can we believe this?
As far as I'm aware, anthropic does dealings with talent here.
So how much are they really convinced and convicted
about their ideals of not using their software for mass surveillance?
And oh, does it really matter anyway?
Because open AI immediately turned over reaches agreement with Pentagon
to use AI models basically saying, yes, you can use them however you want
for all lawful purposes, including mass surveillance and and autonomous weapons
because there's no law against it.
So go ahead. Of course, Sam Altman is going to do that.
Good old Trump buddy Sam Altman called into the White House
on the second day of the new Trump 2.0 administration with Trump gushing
over Altman and Ellison and Son and others talking about how they're going
to build the project Stargate.
Do you think Altman is not going to turn over?
Anyway, all of this is to at the very least, even for the most
AI skeptical amongst my audience, to underline the fact that AI
is going to be part of the conversation of warfare going forward,
no matter whether you think it is 100 percent smoke and mirrors
or there is some even grain of their there.
This is going to be part of the conversation precisely
because the idea of autonomous weapon systems, these AI controlled systems
that will that will target and kill independently of any human operator
is exactly what the US military and every other military on the planet
desires in order to basically give themselves a carte blanche
for any actions that may be undertaken.
Oh, you know, it wasn't us that killed Ayatollah Khamenei.
It was Claude that killed him.
We just we just gave it some general instructions
and it went out there and found him and decided that he was a target
and killed him, etc.
That's going to be part of the conversation
that's going to be worked in going forward.
So I think there is a bigger story here about AI and its use in wartime.
But I don't think that's the whole story of what's going on here, obviously.
And I think the Pentagon is going to continue to do whatever
the Pentagon does in whatever way it wants, regardless of whether or not
anthropic is or is not on the outs with the Department of War.
So let's go to some other obvious factors
when we talk about what's happening right now, for example,
the response from various states, which I'm sure we could have seen
coming ahead of time in that aforementioned open Iran war open
thread on corporate report dot com.
One of the first commenters was from Australia and noted that, of course,
Australian Prime Minister has come out and in basically
and in support of the Anglo-Israeli Alliance
and what they're doing there and the targeting of Iran
and how glorious this is and various other leaders have come along
to more or less get on Uncle Sam's good side with regards to this,
including, of course, the Gulf States, where a lot of Uncle Sam's troops
are positioned right now and are be finding themselves being targeted
for the retaliatory strikes that Iran is launching at the moment.
Gulf States condemn Iran retaliatory strikes
as Russia denounces unprovoked US-Israeli war.
So, yes, the Gulf States, oh, you horrible Iranians,
how dare you launch retaliatory strikes on US forces
that are positioned in our countries? You devils you.
How dare you do that?
We have also seen, interestingly from Pakistan, Iran blowback
at least 22 killed trying to storm the US consulate in Pakistan,
specifically in Karachi.
So there's an interesting story there that is as this article
is framing it as part of the Shia crescent that Iran is obviously
part of, well, the large Shia Muslim population in places like Pakistan
are not happy with what's going on.
And there has been some attempt at storming the US Embassy
that did not end well for dozens of dead Pakistanis.
The Russian response that alluded to earlier is interesting
because it does raise some other specters of possible things
that may be happening on the geopolitical grand chessboard.
For example, of course, there is the rubbing of the salt into the wound
with the Moscow official response calling this, quote,
preplanned an unprovoked act of armed aggression
against a sovereign and independent UN member state, and quote,
which is undoubtedly a quote that the Kremlin has been sitting on
and waiting to unleash at least since February of 2022,
when it was, of course, unleashed against them, unprovoked.
It was an unprovoked attack against Ukraine.
Well, here they get to say, well, this is a preplanned
and unprovoked act of armed aggression against the UN member state.
So, Nana, Boo Boo, shame on you,
Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu.
But interestingly, they also talk about the fact
that the attacks could trigger, quote, humanitarian, economic
and possible radiological catastrophe.
Now, is that a reference to, well, if you bomb nuclear sites,
there's going to be nuclear debris or is this perhaps
at least the foreshadowing of a hint of a potential
for things to get nuclear in an exchange based on this?
Well, at least that's how I'm sure certain factions out there
like the Ra Ra Bricks are the saviour.
Russia won't let this stand.
Crowd might argue that this is perhaps an indication
that the Kremlin is at least floating the idea
that they won't take, sit, roll over and take this lately.
What about China?
Well, this handy Middle East Eye article talks about
will China come to Iran's rescue and the short answer is no.
Beijing will not send troops or battleships,
but it will continue working quietly in other ways.
Blah, blah, blah, rhetoric, rhetoric.
No, the short answer is no,
China will not apparently do anything to actually support Iran in this.
Would we expect them to?
Well, maybe there have been some interesting commentary
that I've seen written that's talked about the possibility
of China viewing Tehran as the bulwark
against what it is doing in the East East China Sea,
for example, with Taiwan.
So what is what is China's position in all of this?
Are the Bricks really a thing?
Remember Bricks, guys, Brazil, Russia, Iran.
Well, no, are they going to come to Iran's rescue?
Well, not so far.
Anyway, well, how about the US Congress?
Those Congress critters are going to come to our rescue, right?
Congress rushes to get in the loop
as critics denounce Iran strikes.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.
It's completely and totally illegal for the US president
to simply unilaterally launch military operations
without approval from Congress, right?
They've got to declare war.
Oh, wait, of course, they haven't declared a war since World War Two.
So why would we expect anything different this time?
And I'm sure whatever rhetoric is being used,
it's Operation Epstein Fury.
It's it's a special military opera.
It's it's kinetic military action, whatever garbage rhetoric
is always used to skirt around the non-roadblocks
that exist toward a president launching unilateral military action.
We're seeing it in effect right now.
And of course, Congress will at least posture
and pretend to beat their chest and oh, you can't do this, Mr.
President, but nothing substantial will occur
as it never does from the Congress critters.
And anyway, this is just more
about the selectoral political considerations
that I was talking about earlier.
Perhaps the most interesting response along those lines
were from former congressman, Marjorie Taylor Green,
who called out specifically JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard.
You both need to speak out against the war in Iran.
People are paying attention, very close attention.
Silence won't cut it.
You were both on record repeatedly, publicly and loudly
against going to war with Iran.
Our friend, Charlie Kirk, was adamantly against war with Iran.
You cannot be silent.
Americans are dying.
You both know this is not what we campaign for.
And this is 100 percent what we said would not happen.
We said, I said, you said, no more foreign wars
and no more regime change.
All we wanted was America first.
This is not it.
So I wonder what Vance and Gabbard are up to these.
Oh, that's right.
They're coordinating the strikes from the situation room
with the vice presidential seal adorning the walls
as they look all serious for the cameras
as Operation Epstein Fury continues to unfold live there on Saturday.
So we know that all of that rhetoric that Gabbard and Vance told you
and whispered in your ear that sweet, sweet
hope that they delivered to your veins during the selection process
back in 2025 for they they they were just mouthing words.
And they're showing you they don't care.
They they absolutely are involved in another regime
change war for various purposes, which we'll get into here shortly.
So anyway, that's where Vance and Gabbard are sitting quite literally.
And then we have this.
And I think this might be the most
consequence consequential story in terms of getting us towards
what is happening and why is it happening now?
What is really going on here?
This coming up from antiwar.com just hours ago before
Khamenei killing CIA assessed he would likely be replaced by more
hard line elements of the IRGC, which says, quote, before the US
and Israel launched a war against Iran on Saturday morning and killed
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The CIA assessed that if the Iranian leader were killed,
his role would likely be replaced by hard line figures
from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC.
Yes, of course.
Of course, there are a couple of things that we can take away,
just a priori from these events.
We don't even need all of these news updates, but they will be there
at Corbett report dot com slash Iran war.
But we don't even need these updates to understand
the basic logical calculus that is at play here.
Of course, the Ayatollah has very specifically been the
bulwark and the roadblock against Iran going nuclear,
at least in terms of nuclear weapons, who has specifically
and consistently reaffirmed that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons.
And yet they decided to take him out.
He's he's the one that is going to be.
They know the CIA is assessed.
They already know that he is going to be replaced by more
hard line elements within the government.
So why would they decide to take him out?
Well, of course, there are a couple of or at least a couple of factors at play,
one of which is the always the response that we could always turn to follow the money.
Well, of course, there is the military industrial boondoggle,
which is which is unfolding right now as we speak.
You have heard, I'm sure, some of the commentators talking about how
oh, they're running out of Tomahawks.
They're going to use up all their Tomahawks in these strikes.
That is, of course, the point.
Yes, they have they have supplies.
They need to continuously get rid of those supplies
so that they can order more and make more for the military industrial complex.
That is exactly what's happening.
And lo and behold, this up from zero hedge war stocks back in focus
as Operation Epic Fury drains Tomahawk supplies.
Yes, because, of course, it is good for business
and they are going to be making billions and billions
for the military industrial complex.
And oh, wouldn't you know it?
U.S. defense stocks booming as we speak.
Surprise, surprise.
The Dow's up $50,000, says the absolutely financially illiterate
Pam Bondi to the trained claps and cheers of the mega crowd.
So that is one aspect of what is going on.
But of course, that is not really the heart of this.
Yes, there's always the monetary aspect,
but the monetary aspect is just used to keep the lower level
middle manager gophers of this larger agenda in the game.
Why are they in it?
Well, maybe for their own crass financial purposes.
But what is the game really about?
It isn't really about the money,
which we know is created out of nothing by the banksters themselves.
So that isn't really what this is about.
What it is about, of course, ultimately is power and consolidation
of control, centralization of control in the coming regional
regional slash global governmental system that we know is being
worked on and has been being worked on for generations.
But how does Iran play into that?
Well, in order to understand that, we have to understand
how we came to this spot in history.
Because guess what?
The Iran strikes and what's going on didn't start on Saturday.
It didn't start last June with the 12 day war.
It didn't start a few years ago.
It didn't start with the JCPOA.
It didn't start at the beginning of the 21st century.
It started, well, arguably, I guess we could go back
through thousands of years of history to the old ancient Persian people
and the Great Persian Empire.
And we could talk about what Hegel called the world's first historical people
and all of that, but we don't have to go quite that far.
Or at least we're not going to in today's podcast.
What we can do is go back to when Iran very,
very squarely came on the geopolitical chess board.
And as viewers of how and why big oil conquered the world will know
that, of course, took place in 1901.
Another global competitor to the standard oil throne
emerged in Iran at the turn of the 20th century.
In 1901, millionaire socialite William Knox Darcy
negotiated an incredible concession with the King of Persia,
exclusive rights to prospect for oil throughout most of the country for 60 years.
After seven years of fruitless search,
Darcy and his Glasgow based partner, Burma Oil,
were ready to abandon the country altogether.
In early May of 1908, they sent a telegram to their geologist
telling him to dismiss his staff, dismantle his equipment and come back home.
He defied the order and weeks later struck oil.
Burma Oil promptly spun off the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
to oversee production of Persian oil.
The British government took 51% majority control of the company's shares
in 1914 at the behest of Winston Churchill,
then First Lord of the Admiralty, and survives today as BP.
Yes, as viewers of the big oil documentary will know all too well,
the cementing of the oil world order in the late 19th slash early 20th century
completely reconfigured the global geopolitical chessboard
and made certainly formerly neglected slices of the geopolitical pie,
like Iran, somewhat more interesting and important and flavorful
for the would be eaters of the Anglo-American Empire.
To you to really extend that metaphor.
And you will know that, for example,
the Anglo-Persian slash Anglo-Iranian slash BP interests in Persia
were at least part of what cemented the opposition
to the proposed Berlin Bagdad railway in the lead up to World War One,
which was contributory to the World War One conspiracy.
But let's skip ahead in this story to the 1950s
when viewers of false flags, the secret history of Al Qaeda will know Iran,
of course, attempted to nationalize the oil,
tried to take a greater stake in its own geoeconomic interests,
which was, of course, a no-no that was met with fierce
and immediate deep state opposition.
In March 1951, the Iranian parliament
voted to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian oil company,
the British oil giant that struck oil near the Persian Gulf in 1908,
and offered the premiership of the government to Mohamed Mossadeq,
an outspoken secular nationalist.
Immediately after taking office,
Mossadeq affected the nationalization, stating,
our long years of negotiations with foreign countries
have yielded no results this far.
With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget
and combat poverty, disease and backwardness among our people.
Another important consideration is that by the elimination
of the power of the British company,
we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue
by means of which the internal affairs of our country
have been influenced.
Once this tutelage has ceased,
Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.
The nationalization put Tehran on a collision course with London.
But Britain knew that a military intervention was not possible
without American approval and,
despite harsh economic sanctions on the country
and a boycott of the newly nationalized oil industry
that was joined by much of the Western world,
they could not overthrow the Iranian government themselves.
Instead, they had to turn to the US.
Although the Truman administration was initially hesitant to become involved,
that changed with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower
in the installation of the Dulles Brothers,
Allen and John Foster,
as director of central intelligence
and secretary of state respectively.
By June of 1953,
the CIA was already adapting the British coup proposal
into their own covert operation, dubbed Operation TP Ajax.
An open secret in the world of intelligence,
the CIA MI6 role in the overthrow of Mossadec
was officially denied by the US government
for over half a century
and is still unacknowledged by the British government to this day.
Nevertheless, the CIA's own internal history of the operation,
first revealed to the public in the year 2000,
confirms the extent of the American and British role in the coup.
They convinced the Shah of Iran to agree to the plan.
They handpicked General Faslullah Zahidi as Mossadec's successor.
They rolled out a propaganda campaign to portray Mossadec,
a devout adherent to democratic nationalism
who rigorously excluded the nation's communist party from his government,
as a communist sympathizer who would steer Iran into the arms of the Soviets.
They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bribing journalists, clerics,
and even Iranian parliament members themselves to go along with the plot.
And they used a network of agents and suitcases full of money
to incite riots and protests across the country.
In the end, the operation was a success.
Mossadec was driven from power, General Zahidi took his place,
the Western-backed Shah ruled the country with the iron fist
of his feared secret police for the next 25 years,
and a new agreement on sales of Iranian oil was reached.
This time, though, the Anglo-Iranian oil company,
now rebranded as British Petroleum,
would not have a monopoly on the country's lucrative oil reserves.
An international consortium was put together to share in the profits,
with American companies Chevron and Standard Oil cut into the deal.
And yes, you can continue pulling on that historical thread
and traveling that historical path through the 1950s and 60s and 70s,
through the installation and then the brutal regime of tyranny
brought about by the Shah of Iran.
And his Savak secret police.
Again, there's a lot to be told about that tale
and, of course, U.S. complicity in that tale,
including, of course, the Shah's good personal friend
and buddy, David Rockefeller,
and what role that might have played
in the development of events there in Iran in that time period.
But, of course, that inevitably leads us to the 1979 Islamic Revolution
and the installation of the new Islamic Theocracy in Iran
and the Ayatollah.
And then, of course, it just inevitably follows from there
this seemingly eternal enmity between the U.S. and Iran.
Why is the U.S. the great Satan in the Iranian people's imagination
and why is Iran this great boogeyman in the U.S. public imagination?
It is because of those events, of those chaotic times,
of course, the hostage crisis and everything else that came after that point.
And that is why, at least in the minds of many Americans,
there is this never-ending hatred of Iran and the Iranian people.
But there is more to say about that Islamic Revolution
and what role the Deep State may have played in that as well.
As anyone who's been tuned into conspiracy reality will know,
there was some interesting documents
that came out about a decade ago
that revealed more along those lines.
I wrote about it at the time on the Corbett Report back in 2016.
Another conspiracy confirmed.
Khomeini had a secret channel with the U.S.,
which reports from those documents that Ayatollah Khomeini
was in direct communication with U.S. President Jimmy Carter
in the crucial weeks following the Shah's departure from Iran
on January 16, 1979, i.e., before the Revolution.
And despite vigorous denial by the Iranian government,
the records show that Khomeini struck a conciliatory tone
with the U.S. government as he attempted to broker his return
to the country.
He was exiled at the time.
You will see we are not in any particular animosity
with the Americans.
Khomeini wrote in a message to U.S. President Jimmy Carter
at the time.
And the records stretch back even further.
They indicate that Khomeini's contact
with the U.S. government stretched back to 1963
when the then-exiled religious leader made contact
with President Kennedy to inform him that, quote,
he was not opposed to American interests in Iran
and, quote, expressed his belief in close cooperation
between Islam and other world religions.
So make of that what you will.
Anyway, there was contact between the sides
before the Revolution took place.
And what exactly the deep state machinations
and calculus may have been at that time
is undoubtedly buried deep in records
that you and I will never have access to.
But there is no doubt that from that time,
as I say, Iran became the great boogeyman.
And certainly, since the 1990s,
it has been framed as the great Islamic nuclear threat.
Oh, the Islamic bomb.
Oh, what if the Iranians get the bomb?
The Iranian crazies are working on the bomb.
And we have all seen the buildup,
the crescendo of nuclear propaganda and hysteria
concerning Iran's nuclear program for decades now.
Hand-ringing over Iran's nuclear program is nothing new.
It became a mainstay of Western political discourse
after an Iranian dissident revealed
the Iranian government's plans
for a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in August 2002.
But the surprising fact for Americans and others around the world
who get their information from the corporate mainstream media
is that Iran's pre-2003 nuclear weapons program
has long been known and admitted.
Since 2003, when the program was scrapped,
not a single piece of evidence has been presented,
not even by Netanyahu or the Israeli government,
that the Iranian government ever pursued
anything other than what it said it was pursuing,
a nuclear energy program.
Not that that fact has ever stopped Netanyahu
from using any opportunity to use
cartoon-level propaganda tactics
to convince the world otherwise.
In the case of Iran's nuclear plans to build a bomb,
this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium.
And Iran has to go through three stages.
The first stage, they have to enrich enough low enriched uranium.
The second stage, they have to enrich enough medium enriched uranium.
And the third stage and final stage,
they have to enrich enough high enriched uranium
for the first bomb.
Where's Iran?
Iran's completed the first stage.
It took them many years, but they completed it,
and they're 70% of the way there.
Now they're well into the second stage.
And by next spring, at most, by next summer,
at current enrichment rates,
they will be finished, the medium enrichment,
and move on to the final stage.
From there it's only a few months,
possibly a few weeks.
Before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.
Ladies and gentlemen, what I've told you now
is not based on secret information.
It's not based on military intelligence.
It's based on the public reports
of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Anybody could read them.
They're online.
So if these are the facts,
if these are the facts, and they are,
where should a red line be drawn?
A red line should be drawn right here.
Before, before Iran completes the second stage
of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb.
Before Iran gets to a point
where it's a few months away or a few weeks away,
from amassing enough enriched uranium
to make a nuclear weapon.
Now each day that point is getting closer.
And that's why I speak today with such a sense of urgency.
Of course, Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons,
and Netanyahu's Wiley Coyote bomb and red line warnings
bore no greater semblance to reality
than the cartoon propaganda
surrounding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
Not only did the IAEA repeatedly confirm
that Iran never diverted any nuclear material
into any military program,
but even the US intelligence community itself conceded
that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Most remarkable of all was Mossad's own assessment
that Iran was not performing the activity
necessary to produce weapons.
As I detailed earlier this year in
We Need to Talk About the Iran Protests,
fear mongering over Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program
was the basis for an extraordinary series of measures
against the country in recent decades.
These measures include Nitro Zeus,
a full-scale military cyber attack against Iran,
the best known element of which was Stuxnet,
the military-grade cyber weapon co-developed
by the United States and Israel
that specifically targeted Iran's
nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.
Iran's non-existent nuclear program
also provided the pretext for sanctions
aimed at crippling the country's economy,
including the delisting of Iranian banks
from the SWIFT network
connecting the world's financial institutions.
The fear mongers even went so far
as to plant evidence of nuclear weapons
involvement on Iran to further justify these attacks.
But the great irony is that there really is
a nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East.
It is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It does not allow inspections of its arsenal.
It does not even officially acknowledge
its stockpile of nuclear weapons.
It has even resisted the push for an international treaty
recognizing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
And that country is Israel.
Oh, sorry, spoiler for anyone who hasn't caught
my reporting on the real Middle East nuclear threat.
But yes, the real Middle East nuclear threat
turns out to be not Iran, but Israel,
the actual possessor of hundreds of nuclear warheads.
No one knows exactly how many,
because of course they have never signed
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Their nuclear armaments have never been
the subject of any inspection.
And in fact, they don't officially exist,
or at least everyone pretends to not officially acknowledge
Iran, Israel's nuclear stockpile.
So anyway, and of course it all came from
stolen information from the US nuclear program.
And materials and goods and parts, et cetera.
I have talked about that many times in the past,
so you have some catching up to do.
If you want to find out more information about that,
and you can do so by following the links
from quarterreport.com slash Iran war.
But I think, again, we know how that story goes,
the Iranian nuclear threat.
Look at Iran and then Yahoo for decades
telling the United States lecturing
and hectoring the US public
that their mortal existential enemy threat
is Iran and Iran's nuclear program.
When have I ever lied to you?
Says Bibi, with a straight face somehow.
Now, having said that, there's so much more to talk about
with regards to the history that led us to this point,
including, of course, the wave after wave of protest movement
that just spontaneously arose up in Iran.
Yes, there is no doubt that the Iranian people
have suffered under their government
as every people around the world suffers
under the government to a greater or lesser extent.
And there have been protest movements,
but there's no doubt also that those protest movements
have been fomented and helped along
by the propagandists and other deep state operatives
in the Anglo-Israeli Empire.
And examples of that go back years and years.
Remember the green movement
and the Iranian elections in 2009
and what was happening there?
Well, I do.
And I had interviews along those lines
talking about what was really going on
in the ground at that time.
I had a report on those 2017 slash 18 Iranian protests
that were all the rage at that moment.
We need to talk about the Iran protests.
You might remember that.
And we can talk about the many, many examples
of the deep state openly musing
about how they would engineer some sort of false flag event
in order to justify their inevitable strike on Iran.
For example, as I documented in four times,
the U.S. threatened to stage an attack
and blame it on Iran,
starting, of course, with Patrick Klosson's infamous 2012 lecture
on crisis initiation about how,
well, we could just sink one of our own subs
and blame it on Iran.
And who would know?
And anyway, we'd be at war
because crisis initiation is difficult, as he says.
And other examples of some of the incredible
harebrained schemes that others have proffered in the past.
We could point to the path to Persia
and all of these sorts of inner documents
talking about this.
But here we are.
We're at the point that has been talked about
and trumpeted for decades.
And in the end, it didn't even take any sort of false flag event.
They just had to say the words often enough
until eventually they just go ahead and do it
and the public just accepts it.
Or do they?
I guess the real question in all of this
is what happens now?
What happens going forward?
And that is obviously something that is still left on the table.
And it's left on the table, of course,
for the populations of various countries
to decide for themselves what they do and do not
and will and will not abide
when it comes to the actions undertaken in their name,
to the extent that there is any sort of popular control
over any of the mechanisms of government.
If government even has to pretend
to take public sentiment into account anymore,
then obviously public reaction to these events in America,
in Israel, in the UK, in Canada,
and every other Western democracy
that's on the Anglo-Israeli side.
Well, that will be decided in the coming days, weeks, and months.
As obviously these events continue to reverberate
for quite some time, whatever happens,
I think it's safe to say that this is an event
that completely reshapes the global geopolitical chess board
and will have ramifications for some time to come.
But also, I think the one response
that everyone is presumably waiting on
and really waiting to see what will happen
is the Russia-slash-China response.
Will there be anything other than token protest of these events,
or will this be the final line in the sand?
And as you know, by now, it was the subject
of the second ever edition of this podcast.
Back in 2007, 19 years ago,
the second ever edition of Corbett Report podcast
was called World War III Starts in Iran
because at that time, as I was noting,
talking about the then very fresh events
of the Munich Security Conference of February 2007
when Putin infamously drew his line in the sand
and started talking about, essentially,
talking about America and calling it out
as a rogue nation on the international stage
and saying, we're not going to just sit here
and abide by this and let these things transpire.
Well, that was 19 years ago,
and that was really the origins for many of these bricks
are the savior type people of the idea
that there is some sort of bricks alliance
or axis against the NATO-slash-Israel alliance
and that they're going to draw this great line in the sand
and everything will be different
because don't worry, the Americans
will be stopped dead in their tracks
by the Russia-Chinese alliance.
Or will they?
Anyway, that was the narrative at that time,
as you might recall.
But some hints towards what a Russian response
to an American attack on Iran might be
come from an AP article, February 10, 2007,
called Putin Warns US Policy Creating New Arms Race.
Mr. Putin was speaking at the 43rd conference
on security policy in Munich,
and he said nations, quote,
are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force
in international relations.
One state, the United States,
has overstepped its national borders in every way.
This is very dangerous.
Nobody feels secure anymore
because nobody can hide behind international law.
This is nourishing an arms race
with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons, he added.
So from that story,
we obviously get the tenor of the Russian
thinking along these lines that
Iraq might have been the last straw
and Iran, of course, would be one step too far
and Russia would feel compelled to act
in that event of an American attack against Iran.
This was followed up in April 6, 2007
by a Moss News report entitled
US to Suffer Losses Upon Attacking Iran,
which details a man named General Yuri Solovyov,
the head of Moscow's air defense,
who delivered a pretty thinly veiled threat
that Iran's weapons, among others,
include our anti-aircraft systems,
as in Russia's anti-aircraft systems,
which allow them, the Iranians,
to fight all types of flying objects
currently in service in the US Army.
Besides, we all remember our specialists
have trained them since Soviet times.
So here you have a key member of the Russian army,
basically saying that Russia will be an important part
of the Iranian response to any attack.
And then I think that gives the tenor of the idea
that the Russians are setting up
for it to defend their Iranian interests.
And anyone who thinks that the Chinese
wouldn't act to defend their interests in Iran
are probably seriously mistaken
in an extremely oil-starved country
being fed by an extremely oil-rich nation
would obviously see the American attack
as a threat to their existence.
If China and Russia enter the theater,
all bets are off the table.
It really then becomes World War III.
There you go.
As I say, that was the narrative there in 2007
and that set up the next couple of decades of,
well, not just mainstream,
but independent media reporting
on the geopolitical situation.
Lines in the sand have been drawn.
There is this great BRICS resistance movement
that's arising and that may or may not
eventuate in actual military resistance
to ongoing American slash NATO slash Israeli
imperial aggression.
And that is the defining metric
that has been used for decades now.
The reason why Iran has always been
the red line for so many people
is because if you cross militarily into Iran,
all bets are off the table.
World War III is on the table.
And we are at that moment,
whether we realize it or not.
And I'm not sure exactly what is the best
or even the worst possible outcome
from all of this,
because certainly, obviously,
it would be easy to say, well, good,
okay, let's hope World War III
does not eventuate here.
Let's hope there is some sort of
peaceful, happy transition of power
to some Iranian government
that everyone can live with
and everything just goes back to normal.
But actually, that really doesn't solve anything,
even if that were to take place,
even if the most peaceful and passable
alternative were to take place.
That doesn't really placate anyone
or anything because all it means
is that all of the hot air
and bloviating over the past couple of decades
about red lines and lines in the sand
and imperial aggression
versus the heroic brick saviors
means all of that was hot air
and nothing will eventuate.
And I don't know about you,
but I'm not personally going to take my cue
for what may or may not be coming
from a Russia-China response
from the very same bloviators and blowhards
who just months ago were assuring us
that U.S. would never go into Venezuela
because they are armed to the teeth
with these high-tech Russian anti-aircraft defenses
that Uncle Sam would never even approach,
would never even attempt to get through
and never, oh, wait, of course.
Oh, let's take Maduro
in the middle of the night,
zero resistance.
Absolutely nothing.
Not a single American even injured,
let alone dead.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Or the same people who have been talking for four years now
about how Russia is two weeks away
from ending this special military operation in Ukraine.
It's not a war.
Don't call it a war.
They're just weeks away, guys,
for the last four years.
These people have been wrong about everything
and are, I'm sure, going to say
how this is all some kind of great strategic win
for the Bricks Alliance.
I'm not sure I'm going to listen to that narrative,
but at any rate, the cards are on the table
and this is a now or never, this is a make or break.
I don't know what is going to happen
any more than any of the other
bloviating blowhards out there in this space do,
but at least I will admit
that I do not know how this is going to unfold,
but I do know what is being worked towards,
which of course is the dismantling of yet another,
at least potential threat
or even rival on the geopolitical stage
to Israeli dominance of the Middle East.
So we'll see.
We will see in the coming days and weeks
how this turns out.
There's going to be a lot of information
to keep track of.
This could be the defining events of our times,
so I hope you are paying attention.
And if you are, the place to go with information
and to find information as it arises
is the Iran War Open Thread up on CorbettReport.com.
Once again, all of the information that I have talked about today,
all of the links, et cetera,
will be in the show notes for today's episode
at CorbettReport.com slash Iran War.
But if you go to the Iran War Open Thread,
you can join the conversation now dozens and dozens
and dozens of comments more coming in all the time
from people all around the world
with information about what is happening in Iran.
So I hope you will go there, take a look at that
and contribute if you are able.
And of course, CorbettReport members are able to log in
and leave their comments in the comments section there.
But that's going to do it for today's exploration.
There's a lot of information on the table,
and hopefully this provides some of the history and context
so you understand what is taking place right now
and why it is taking place.
That is the only way we are going to learn ourselves forward
from all of this mess.
But that's going to do it for today.
James Corbett at CorbettReport.com.
And today I'll leave you with the wise words
of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
We all know the story of Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda.
Bin Laden was responsible for today's attack.
So often was that story repeated in the wake of 9-11
that the hypnotized public forgot that it was, at base.
Just that.
A story.
If they didn't have an Osama bin Laden out there,
they didn't vent one.
In False Flags, the Secret History of Al Qaeda,
you will learn the truth behind that story
and uncover the lies that led to the War of Terror.
Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there.